


i’ve been looking for a night

by dustorange



Category: DCU
Genre: But also, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd is Dead, bruce: oh looks like it’s time to lash out, complex emotion: occurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 00:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19366897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustorange/pseuds/dustorange
Summary: Bruce hits hard. No one’s ever said otherwise.Bruce is left reeling after Jason’s death. Dick takes the brunt of it.





	i’ve been looking for a night

**Author's Note:**

> read ntt 55 for the first time and mmmmmm not bruce’s best parenting moment i have to say

Bruce hits hard. No one’s ever said otherwise.

Still, the impact’s dizzying, and Dick can hardly process it. There’s no copper on his tongue or thunder rattling in his chest; Dick isn’t afraid. But he never—he never expected the blow.

Bruce’s hands have always dwarfed Dick’s. At the circus, Bruce had been a bleary, white macule of a man, lost in a sea of Gotham-pale dredges, but Dick had remembered the heavy, heavy hand on his shoulder after the show was cut short. The fingers, thick as vines, that passed Dick the candle as he made the soft, crucial promise to live for justice in the saffron light. His palms, charcoal-rough and warm and sliced straight down the middle from snapping the barbed wire away from Dick’s red and green body.

It’s not that Dick doesn’t see the fist or its trajectory. Dick’s been reading body language since he was a baby. He sees it: the steady lift of Bruce’s dominant hand, the tide-pull of his left side, the way his heel grinds back like he’s putting out an old, blackened cigarette. It’s a heavy cross. He recognizes it in a second. It’s not that Dick doesn’t know that. He sees it coming. He just doesn’t expect it to land. Somehow. Somehow, he just doesn’t expect it to.

Deus ex machina never happens like it does in the stories. Bruce doesn’t realize what he’s doing. Maybe he already knows. But Alfred doesn’t descend from the stairs to intervene, and the computer doesn’t register any alerts, and it’s hopeless, really, to think that anything could stop Bruce. Nothing can. Nothing does.

The fist maps its way across his face, and leaves his eyes searing like stars, and for a moment, a pitiful, ephemeral moment, Dick wants to cry. The punch feels like a betrayal. Tomorrow, Kory will run her soft fingers over his violet skin and say, “Dick, what _happened_ to you?” And tomorrow it might be okay. But tonight stretches on.

“Don’t you _dare_ blame me for Jason’s death. Don’t you dare.”

Dick’s on his back, stunned, clutching his jaw. He wants tomorrow. He wants tomorrow so fucking bad. Instead, Bruce, cowless, soaks in the tepid blackness of the cave, looming, and there’s so much hate burnt into his face that Dick forgets how to breathe.

“Why are you pretending to be _concerned_ about Jason?” heaves Bruce. He’s shaking, and every word is a noose. “ _You_ told me that you resented that I had adopted _him_ and not you.”

Dick drags a hand across his face, not daring to wince. He sinks his teeth into his knuckles and closes his eyes. They’re sky-hot. He bites harder, counting every second of the bright sting, trying to replace the hard, scared pulse at his throat. He tastes blood. _I’m not scared of him. I’m not._ He starts to remember how to breathe. He inhales, but the air won’t leave, caged behind his ribs. He still can’t breathe. But the halved success is enough, and Dick forces his eyes to open steadily to say, “No. I didn’t. I didn’t. I only asked why. I only asked _why_ you adopted him.”

He’s not listening. “Why did I think I needed a partner? They _slow you down_. They make you worry about them rather than doing your _job_! He wouldn’t listen. He wanted to do everything his way. Just like _you_. In a few years, I would have had to fire him as I did you.” Ice is too kind a word for Bruce’s eyes. “…I suggest you leave. Give Alfred your key on your way out.”

The cape doesn’t flare as he walks away. It’s too damn heavy. But it crackles, drags, and Bruce snatches at its edges with his gnarled hand, knuckles dark and glistening. The cape smears into the shadows of the cave, and it’s almost gone. Bruce is almost gone.

Dick knows those hands. They never hurt him before. They would never hurt him before.

 _I’m not afraid of him_ , Dick thinks again, painfully, and he grabs the cape. “ _Bruce_. Bruce.”

He doesn’t have much leverage from the sharp ground, whose stalagmites threaten to pierce Dick’s denim, but a shadowman could get the jump on Bruce in the state he’s in.

“Bruce.” Dick tries again. He stands. “You’re hurting. You’re _hurting_. I’m so sorry. But this wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t Jason’s. It just wasn’t. You need to —you need to—”

That’s all it takes. Bruce staggers then. Stops. His shoulders shudder, and his eyes break as he looks back, past Dick. His breath fizzes to a stop. Bruce is only lungs in a heavy piece of black driftwood. He’s rough and dark; he’s never looked less human than he does now, head gummy with wine-colored blood and jaw kissed with rough, aged stubble. His breath comes in snarling gasps. “Jason. Jason. I’m sorry. God. I’m _sorry.”_

“It’s okay,” Dick whispers, even though he knows that Bruce isn’t talking to him. His chest aches worse than his jaw. “It’s okay.”

Dick must be truly off his game because he fails to anticipate Bruce again. He never foresaw the way Bruce’s knees give out, the way he crumbles to the ground like a man made of pumice. There’s a wetness to his hard, seething gasps now, and Dick can do nothing but watch. He kneels next to Bruce, but his hand hovers uselessly over his shoulder. He can’t. He just can’t. “It should have been you,” Bruce rasps. “It should have been you.”

The words are enough of a push. Dick’s hand falls to Bruce’s shoulder, and Dick plays the game he always has with desperate comfort, drawing ugly ellipses that masquerade as circles. He blinks furiously. His vision’s shiny, febrile, and his throat closes like a shutter. “...I know. I know. It’s okay.”

And he learns to breathe out.


End file.
